UB Practical Math test one: statistics • Name:

Almost every morning this summer you exercise. Exercise is important. I do the same. Almost every evening. For twenty-nine years. I was running when you were born.

A standard is merely something against which one measures something. The Dausokele bridge over the Nett River is 3.81 kilometers from where I start my runs. A run out to the east side of the bridge has been a standard distance of mine for the past seven years. The times in the table are my time in minutes for runs from 2001 to 2007.

1. __________ Find the minimum.
2. __________ Find the maximum.
3. __________ Find the range.
4. __________ Find the midrange.
5. __________ Find the mode.
6. __________ Find the median.
7. __________ Find the sample mean x.
8. __________ Find the sample standard deviation sx.
9. Find five numbers, any five numbers you think will work, that have an sample mean x of five and a sample standard deviation sx of 3. They do not have to be five different numbers, some or all can be the same. Some of you are sharing a calculator. Work quietly if this is the case. Write your five numbers below.
10. Is there only one set of five numbers with a mean of five and standard deviation of 3?

For the record, the following table details the date of my run and the time more precisely. Runs with the same date were an "out-and-back" to the far side of Nett Bridge.

Every morning in Africa, a gazelle wakes up.
It knows it must outrun the fastest lion or it will be killed.
Every morning in Africa, a lion wakes up.
It knows that it must run faster than the slowest gazelle, or it will starve.
It doesn't matter whether you're a lion or a gazelle
when the sun comes up you'd better be running.

"It's the road signs, 'Beware of lions.'" – Kip Lagat, Kenyan distance runner, during the Sydney Olympics, explaining why his country produces so many great runners